J.C. Johnson of Crypto Four Corners posts: "A look into the attack on an animal, where mostly the "Skunk Sack" and organs were removed."

The investigation took place in Fruitland, New Mexico area...probably in or very near the Navajo Reservation. This area is very active with a hominid species that appears to be thriving. Please watch the entire video and listen to JC's theory as to why the 'Furry One' killed the skunk. Fascinating video. Here is a link to the previous post - New Mexico 'Furry Ones', 'Skin-Walkers' and 'Shadow Man'...Lonhttp://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2010/08/new-mexico-furry-ones-skin-walkers-and.html

According to the BFRO: http://bfro.net/news/mckenzie.asp a dark, long-armed figure stood up and walked away from the edge of the river as the two whitewater row boats passed by. The location of the incident, and the physical appearance of the figure, and the behavior of the figure are consistent with a sasquatch. Nothing about the figure, or the incident in general, points to a hoax or a case of mistaken identity.

The Three Sisters region of Oregon has a long history of sightings and track finds.

At first glance the figure appears to be a bit larger than the human in the rowboat, and the figure is certainly not closer to the camera than the rowboat.

The behavior of the figure is consistent with a sasquatch. Sasquatches are often spotted near creeks and rivers.

NOTE: I have grab some screen captures from the period of time (between 1:41 - 1:45) on the video. What are your thoughts? Lon

OPELOUSAS, La. — At 18 months, Kyle Warren started taking a daily antipsychotic drug on the orders of a pediatrician trying to quell the boy’s severe temper tantrums.

Thus began a troubled toddler’s journey from one doctor to another, from one diagnosis to another, involving even more drugs. Autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia, oppositional defiant disorder. The boy’s daily pill regimen multiplied: the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant Prozac, two sleeping medicines and one for attention-deficit disorder. All by the time he was 3.

He was sedated, drooling and overweight from the side effects of the antipsychotic medicine. Although his mother, Brandy Warren, had been at her “wit’s end” when she resorted to the drug treatment, she began to worry about Kyle’s altered personality. “All I had was a medicated little boy,” Ms. Warren said. “I didn’t have my son. It’s like, you’d look into his eyes and you would just see just blankness.”

Today, 6-year-old Kyle is in his fourth week of first grade, scoring high marks on his first tests. He is rambunctious and much thinner. Weaned off the drugs through a program affiliated with Tulane University that is aimed at helping low-income families whose children have mental health problems, Kyle now laughs easily and teases his family.

Ms. Warren and Kyle’s new doctors point to his remarkable progress — and a more common diagnosis for children of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder — as proof that he should have never been prescribed such powerful drugs in the first place.

Kyle now takes one drug, Vyvanse, for his attention deficit. His mother shared his medical records to help document a public glimpse into a trend that some psychiatric experts say they are finding increasingly worrisome: ready prescription-writing by doctors of more potent drugs to treat extremely young children, even infants, whose conditions rarely require such measures.

More than 500,000 children and adolescents in America are now taking antipsychotic drugs, according to a September 2009 report by the Food and Drug Administration. Their use is growing not only among older teenagers, when schizophrenia is believed to emerge, but also among tens of thousands of preschoolers.

A Columbia University study recently found a doubling of the rate of prescribing antipsychotic drugs for privately insured 2- to 5-year-olds from 2000 to 2007. Only 40 percent of them had received a proper mental health assessment, violating practice standards from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

“There are too many children getting on too many of these drugs too soon,” Dr. Mark Olfson, professor of clinical psychiatry and lead researcher in the government-financed study, said.

Such radical treatments are indeed needed, some doctors and experts say, to help young children with severe problems stay safe and in school or day care. In 2006, the F.D.A. did approve treating children as young as 5 with Risperdal if they had autistic disorder and aggressive behavior, self-injury tendencies, tantrums or severe mood swings. Two other drugs, Seroquel from AstraZeneca and Abilify from Bristol-Myers Squibb, are permitted for youths 10 or older with bipolar disorder.

But many doctors say prescribing them for younger and younger children may pose grave risks to development of both their fast-growing brains and their bodies. Doctors can legally prescribe them for off-label use, including in preschoolers, even though research has not shown them to be safe or effective for children. Boys are far more likely to be medicated than girls.

Dr. Ben Vitiello, chief of child and adolescent treatment and preventive research at the National Institute of Mental Health, says conditions in young children are extremely difficult to diagnose properly because of their emotional variability. “This is a recent phenomenon, in large part driven by the misperception that these agents are safe and well tolerated,” he said.

Even the most reluctant prescribers encounter a marketing juggernaut that has made antipsychotics the nation’s top-selling class of drugs by revenue, $14.6 billion last year, with prominent promotions aimed at treating children. In the waiting room of Kyle’s original child psychiatrist, children played with Legos stamped with the word Risperdal, made by Johnson & Johnson. It has since lost its patent on the drug and stopped handing out the toys.

Greg Panico, a company spokesman, said the Legos were not intended for children to play with — only as a promotional item.

Cheaper to Medicate

Dr. Lawrence L. Greenhill, president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, concerned about the lack of research, has recommended a national registry to track preschoolers on antipsychotic drugs for the next 10 years. “Psychotherapy is the key to the treatment of preschool children with severe mental disorders, and antipsychotics are adjunctive therapy — not the other way around,” he said.

But it is cheaper to medicate children than to pay for family counseling, a fact highlighted by a Rutgers University study last year that found children from low-income families, like Kyle, were four times as likely as the privately insured to receive antipsychotic medicines.

Texas Medicaid data obtained by The New York Times showed a record $96 million was spent last year on antipsychotic drugs for teenagers and children — including three unidentified infants who were given the drugs before their first birthdays.

In addition, foster care children seem to be medicated more often, prompting a Senate panel in June to ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate such practices.

In the last few years, doctors’ concerns have led some states, like Florida and California, to put in place restrictions on doctors who want to prescribe antipsychotics for young children, requiring a second opinion or prior approval, especially for those on Medicaid. Some states now report prescriptions are declining as a result.

A study released in July by 16 state Medicaid medical directors, which once had the working title “Too Many, Too Much, Too Young,” recommended that more states require second opinions, outside consultation or other methods to assure proper prescriptions. The F.D.A. has also strengthened warnings about using some of these drugs in treating children.

No Medical Reason

Kyle was rescued from his medicated state through a therapy program called Early Childhood Supports and Services, established in Louisiana through a confluence of like-minded child psychiatrists at Tulane, Louisiana State University and the state. It surrounds troubled children and their parents with social and mental health support services.

Dr. Mary Margaret Gleason, a professor of pediatrics and child psychiatry at Tulane who treated Kyle from ages 3 to 5 as he was weaned off the heavy medications, said there was no valid medical reason to give antipsychotic drugs to the boy, or virtually any other 2-year-old. “It’s disturbing,” she said.

Dr. Gleason says Kyle’s current status proves he probably never had bipolar disorder, autism or psychosis. His doctors now say Kyle’s tantrums arose from family turmoil and language delays, not any of the diagnoses used to justify antipsychotics.

“I will never, ever let my children be put on these drugs again,” said Ms. Warren, 28, choking back tears. “I didn’t realize what I was doing.”

Dr. Edgardo R. Concepcion, the first child psychiatrist to treat Kyle, said he believed the drugs could help bipolar disorder in little children. “It’s not easy to do this and prescribe this heavy medication,” he said in an interview. “But when they come to me, I have no choice. I have to help this family, this mother. I have no choice.”

Ms. Warren conceded that she resorted to medicating Kyle because she was unprepared for parenthood at age 22, living in difficult circumstances, sometimes distracted. “It was complicated,” she said. “Very tense.”

Behavior Problems

Kyle was a healthy baby physically, but he was afraid of some things. He spent hours lining up toys. When upset, he screamed, threw objects, even hit his head on the wall or floor — not uncommon for toddlers, but frightening.

“I’d bring him to the doctor and the doctor would say, ‘You just need to discipline him,’ ” Ms. Warren said. “How can you discipline a 6-month-old?”

When Kyle’s behavior worsened after his brother was born, Ms. Warren turned to a pediatrician, Dr. Martin J. deGravelle.

“Within five minutes of sitting with him, he looked at me and said, ‘He has autism, there’s no doubt about it,’ ” Ms. Warren said.

Dr. deGravelle’s clinic notes say Kyle was hyperactive, prone to tantrums, spoke only three words and “does not interact well with strangers.”

He prescribed Risperdal. At the time, Risperdal was approved by the F.D.A. only for adults with schizophrenia or acute manic episodes. The following year it was approved for certain children, 5 and older, with autism and extremely aggressive behavior. It has never been approved by the F.D.A. for use in children younger than 5, although doctors may legally prescribe it as an off-label use.

“Kyle at the time was very aggressive and easily agitated, so you try to find medication that can make him more easily controlled, because you can’t reason with an 18-month-old,” Dr. deGravelle said in a telephone interview. But Kyle was not autistic — according to several later evaluations, including one that Dr. deGravelle arranged with a neurologist. Kyle did not have the autistic child’s core deficit of social interaction, Dr. Gleason said.

Four Greenpeace activists who halted drilling by a British-owned oil exploration rig off Greenland have been arrested after they abandoned their occupation because of severe weather.

Greenlandic police arrested the four after high winds buffeted the Stena Don drilling rig overnight, forcing them to abandon mountaineering-style platforms they had suspended by ropes underneath the platform less than 48 hours earlier.

Morten Nielsen, deputy head of Greenland police, said the four men were rescued between 8pm and midnight local time last night using baskets and ropes lowered from the Stena Don's deck after severe winds and waves up to 6m (18ft) battered the platform.

He said it took about four hours to retrieve the protesters, who have now been arrested under Greenlandic regulations for breaching the 500m safety zone around the rig and under Danish criminal law for trespass.

"Basically we were readying ourselves for any eventuality but it worked out, what needed to be done was a rescue operation," said Nielsen.

He also revealed that the police seized Greenpeace's helicopter, which had flown from its protest ship the Esperanza to photograph the rig and Cairn's operations to stop nearby icebergs, yesterday in the town of Qeqertarsuaq.

He said the helicopter had been impounded as evidence, and also to ensure Greenpeace paid any fines or liabilities for its protests in Baffin Bay, which began 11 days ago. The four protesters will make their first court appearance in about 24 hours, after being transferred from the rig to the town of Aasiaat. The four could also be deported, instead of being prosecuted.

The activists' retreat is a setback for Greenpeace, which believed a longer-term occupation of the rig would be a serious blow to attempts by the Edinburgh-based exploration firm Cairn Energy to strike oil or gas before the intense Arctic winter sets in.

However, sources in the region had predicted when the four protesters clambered on to the platform at dawn on Tuesday that severe weather forecast for early this morning would cut short their occupation.

Greenpeace has warned that if Cairn strikes oil or gas, it will provoke an "oil rush" in the vulnerable and unspoilt waters of the Arctic as the world's largest oil firms exploit one of the world's largest untapped reserves.

Cairn Energy said drilling had resumed as soon as the four were arrested. Industry experts had denied the campaigners' claims that a delay of four or five days would have seriously damaged the drilling operation; the company had built delays and unscheduled stoppages into its schedule.

The four are now expected to be prosecuted by Greenlandic police, but Greenpeace said said it would now widen its campaign against deep sea drilling by taking the British government to court.

The group has sent the government a "letter before action", accusing ministers of issuing new licenses for deep sea drilling in British waters before they had found out exactly what caused the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

John Sauven, Greenpeace UK's executive director, said: "Our climbers have stopped this rig from drilling in the fragile Arctic for two days, and this is just the start of a long campaign. The world needs to go beyond oil, but here in the UK the government is waving through applications for new drilling as if the Deepwater Horizon explosion never happened.

"The Gulf of Mexico disaster was a game changer, so ministers should suspend new deep water licences and companies like Cairn Energy must stop dangerous drilling in the Arctic and start investing in clean alternatives instead."

George Lucas' video game business shrank Wednesday as LucasArts laid off about one-third of its approximately 250 person staff, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The San-Francisco based video game publisher has for years struggled to find successes beyond its Star Wars-branded titles. Its only releases so far this year have been two downloadable adventure games, though it will put out a highly anticipated sequel called Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II in October.

"It just comes down to the fact we're reorganizing our team to address the internal needs of our studio,'' company spokeswoman Emilie Hicks said of the cuts.

The laid-off workers were not tied to a specific title. "We're still on track for our upcoming slate of games,'' Hicks added.

[Update, 4:58 p.m.: Most of the laid off staff worked in game production, according to a person familiar with the situation. Other divisions such as marketing and distribution were largely unaffected.]

The company has seen a high level of executive turnover in recent years. Former President Darrell Rodriguez, who came from Electronic Arts, left in May after just two years on the job. He was replaced in June by Paul Meegan, formerly of Gears of War developer Epic Games.

In July, Haden Blackman, who served as creative director on the original Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, LucasArts' most successful internally produced title of recent years, and the sequel, unexpectedly left. However, the company scored a surprise coup in August when Clint Hocking, a high-profile game director from Ubisoft, announced that he would be joining LucasArts.

The company's only other successes in recent years have been the Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones titles produced by the Warner Bros.-owned developer Traveller's Tales. LucasArts is making a massive investment in online multi-player game Star Wars: The Old Republic, which will be released next year.

The layoffs, first reported on the video game site Kotaku, come as a number of traditional video game publishers such as EA and Activision Blizzard have been cutting staff in response to a slowdown in retail sales.

Alan Simpson, the GOP co-chairman of President Obama's fiscal commission, on Tuesday questioned some disability benefits paid to war veterans, saying they are "not helping" the nation's debt crisis.

Simpson, an Army veteran and former chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, specifically questioned automatic disability awards to those affected by the defoliant Agent Orange, which the U.S. used during the Vietnam War. Simpson said the payments don't mesh with his panel's goal of reducing the debt.

"The irony [is] that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess," said Simpson, according to The Associated Press.

The ex-senator came under fire last week for comparing Social Security to a "milk cow with 310 million tits." Several liberal Democratic lawmakers and advocacy groups have called for his resignation, creating an unwanted controversy for the fiscal panel, which is expected to make its recommendations for reducing the growth of the federal deficit in December.

His remarks could again stoke anger among critics — they came on the same day Obama gave a major address on the end of the combat mission in Iraq, citing increased benefits for healthcare and education, especially to treat mental ailments like post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Part of ending a war responsibly is standing by those who have fought it," the president said.

According to the AP, Simpson declined to say whether the fiscal commission would take up the matter.

The panel has already been under intense pressure from lawmakers in both political parties, who are worried the commission will propose either drastic spending cuts or tax increases to reduce the nation's growing debt.

But there is concern about the issue among some key lawmakers.

The chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), told the AP on Tuesday he will address the broader issue of such disability payments at a hearing previously scheduled for Sept. 23.

LaCrosse Footwear Inc. has landed an $8.6 million order for military boots. The Portland company announced the U.S. Army order for its Danner Combat Hiker boot on Wednesday. The boot will be worn by soldiers in Afghanistan.

The order is the latest military contract for LaCrosse (NASDAQ: BOOT), which makes work and outdoor boots.

“In recent years, we’ve been working closely with the U.S. Army to develop and provide footwear for extended wear and high performance in harsh mountain terrain and challenging weather conditions," said CEO Joseph P. Schneider.

After nearly going bankrupt a decade ago, LaCrosse has had a busy 2010. The company expanded its manufacturing footprint in Portland with a new 59,000-square-foot plant and it opened a new 4,000 square-foot retail store to showcase the company's legacy as artisans of outdoor and work footwear.

Still, like all military suppliers, LaCrosse could feel the pain of Defense Department budget cuts of about 10 percent over the next three years. As the Business Journal previously reported (subscription required), sales for LaCrosse's "work segment," which includes government orders, fell 14.9 percent in the quarter ended June 27, 2010.

Inventions 1969: Six weeks after landing men on the moon, Americans take another giant leap for mankind with the nation’s first cash-spewing, automated teller machine.

The machine, called the Docuteller, was installed in a wall of the Chemical Bank in Rockville Center, New York. It marked the first time reusable, magnetically coded cards were used to withdraw cash.

A bank advertisement announcing the event touted, “On Sept. 2, our bank will open at 9:00 and never close again!”

Don Wetzel, an executive at Docutel, a Dallas company that developed automated baggage-handling equipment, is generally credited as coming up with the idea for the modern ATM while standing in a bank line. Previous automated bank machines had allowed customers to make deposits, pay bills or obtain automated cash — after purchasing a one-time voucher or card from a teller. The new device was the first in the United States to dispense cash using a mag-stripe card that didn’t require teller intervention.

For the time being, tellers had no need to fear for their jobs. At about $30,000 each ($178,000 in today’s buying power), the machines cost more than a teller’s annual salary.

And they could only dispense cash, not receive deposits or transfer money between accounts. Those features came with the 1971 version, called the Total Teller.

The ATM freed customers from the tyranny of banker’s hours, giving them access to dough 24/7 and even, much later, performing the function of currency converters — allowing Americans traveling abroad to obtain cash in local currencies.

Of course, the machines were good for banks, too, eventually letting them cut costs, reduce teller lines and, of course, charge outrageous user fees.

There were issues, though. Because the machines were offline there was no way to check a customer’s balance to see if there was enough money to cover a withdrawal.

“Not only was it a technical problem to overcome, it was a problem in the minds of the banker to issue a card to somebody and not know whether he had the money in his account or not,” Wetzel said in a 1995 interview,

To overcome that barrier, there was a $150 daily limit for ATM withdrawals. Other obstacles included finding a manufacturer to put mag stripes on the back of the bank cards, and printing receipts that could be read by machine.

Then there were problems with resistance from banks, who worried that customers would reject the machines, or that reducing face-to-face interaction with customers would lose opportunities to sell customers other bank services.

Customers embraced the new machines, however, which opened the way for other manufacturers to get in the game.

Diebold was one of the first companies to see the gold in the emerging ATM market. A maker of safes and vaults until then, the company decided to branch out in 1974 with the first installation of its TABS 500 ATM. By 1995, Diebold was producing more than half of all ATMs in the United States.

Today there are ATMs everywhere, including one at the McMurdo research station on Antarctica –- but no sign of one, just yet, on the moon. And today’s ATMs go far beyond teller duty. Some even sell lottery tickets and postage stamps.

But along with the ubiquity of the machines came security issues.

The first ATMs were offline mechanical machines. Within a decade, with the rise of PCs, they became electronic devices. By the 1990s, ATMs were being connected to backend networks by modem, and their dominant operating system was Microsoft Windows. This, of course, opened a whole new wave of vulnerabilities.

Since then, hackers and scammers have kept banks on their toes devising ever-more-sophisticated ways to steal cash through or ATMs. Skimmers, until recently, were the dominant mode. The devices consist of components slipped over legitimate card readers that surreptitiously record data from the mag strip of cards as customers insert them. A tiny camera captures the customer’s PIN as it’s entered on the keypad.

There have also been a spate of attacks using a default passcode that the maker of one ATM brand printed inexplicably printed in an operator’s manual easily found online.

Recently, however, hackers have found new ways to strip ATMs of their cash by installing malware on the machines. Last year, malicious software was discovered on 20 bank ATMs in Russia and Ukraine. The program was designed to attack ATMs made by Diebold and NCR that run Microsoft Windows XP software.

The attack requires someone to physically load the malware on to the machine — with a USB stick or cable, for example. Once this is done, attackers can insert a control card into the machine’s card reader to trigger the malware and give them control of the machine through a custom interface and the ATM’s keypad.

A thief could also instruct the machine to eject whatever cash was inside the machine. A fully loaded bank ATM can hold up to $600,000. The malware also captures account numbers and PINs from the machine’s transaction application and then delivers them to the thief on a receipt printed from the machine in an encrypted format, or to a storage device inserted in the card reader.

Inventions 1969: Six weeks after landing men on the moon, Americans take another giant leap for mankind with the nation’s first cash-spewing, automated teller machine.

Thieves are becoming more and more sophisticated. If they make a way to stop them, they will find another way... We won't use the flexi tellers (ATMs)... too many people have had their money stolen, and its not worth the risk.

Thieves are becoming more and more sophisticated. If they make a way to stop them, they will find another way... We won't use the flexi tellers (ATMs)... too many people have had their money stolen, and its not worth the risk.

Pen

Good evening Pen,I'm glad you liked "Arrival". It is gorgeous.

We don't use ATM's either. When we were in Phoenix it was too damn hot to stand around using an ATM! So we never got into the habit.Crystal

But it shows an autumn landscape. Don't want to have autumn again. I want some summer. But I have to realize that some leaves already do change their color.

Hello Phil,I never look forward to November here. STORMS! Blowing these huge cedars like crazy. Other than that I do enjoy autumn. But I always hate to see summer end. Guess it goes back to school days as a kid.Crystal

Three Venusians: Jill, Donn and Valiant Thor landed in Virginia in 1957. They were apprehended by Police officers and were escorted to Washington D.C. to speak with the Secretary of Defense. Soon police from every conceivable district and agency had joined in, all trying to claim their right to escort them to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Val Thor was the commander of a spaceship with a crew of about 200. It was believed that his ship eventually ended up in the Lake Mead area before it disappeared below the surface. Nixon allegedly met Val Thor. A man named Frank Stranges claims that he keeps contact with Valiant and Crew.